practicing gratitude

why give thanks to god before we eat or before we sleep or when we rise? why do it out loud, with others?

i just returned from a week in southwest montana, the land of my childhood.
(this is a thumbnail so click on the photo for a larger version. it is hyalite reservoir and the hyalite peaks in the gallatin range of the rocky mountians)

i suppose that the sheer beauty of the place evoked these reflections on grace and gratitude, but not only that. it was also the fact of being with family, some of whom no longer go to church nor have the habit or expectation of 'saying grace' before meals. naturally vacation jolts routines and so i'm not sure how much our kids noticed that we didn't pray together at meals.

yet because we didn't, i got to thinking about the simplicity of the interplay between belief and practice in this case. believing that god has made all things, created not out of necessity but out of divine self-giving and love, we give thanks, and that very practice of giving thanks, day in and day out, makes of us people who are grateful. people who are grateful in this way seem to me to have certain other virtues including some humility and kindness towards others grounded in a profound sense of how much one has received that one cannot account for out of one's own merit. it is not that one can simply draw a divide between the grateful who believe and pray, and the ungrateful who do not. i know it is not so simple. yet when one does not kneel or bow or raise one's hands while speaking words of thanksgiving for that which we have received, which 'miraculously' is here before us (for how may of us know from whence cometh our food, exactly?), other thoughts dominate. not necessarily bad thoughts, but simply not these.

our neighbors here in new haven, who are lovely people and becoming friends, are british and like most of their generation of brits, do not go to church or confess any religious belief. yet here in the usa they have met a few people whom they like and respect, people who reflective about living and yet are active in churches (their assumption: religious people believe because of habit or lack of critical thought). so, one of them asked me if we could talk about this. what does it mean for us to live as believers, to seek to shape our lives according to what we know of God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? and it occurs to me that somewhere near the core is this: the practice of living gratitude. the practice of giving thanks, it turns out, has daily implications and gains its sense from biblical and sacramental theology ('giving thanks, he took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them').

odd, then, that the books i most turn to on practices that shape a christian life, practicing our faith and way to live, both edited by dorothy bass, don't take up the practice of giving thanks. of course, the books are meant to be suggestive, not comprehensive. but it raises the issue of how we might gain by some considered reflection on gratitude as a practice. in doing so, we might both understand better how it matters that faith becomes a way of life, and how to make such a life manifest to those who don't understand or live it.

anon, and +peace